What's the support policy for LTS GraalVM JDK versions?

[diegomarquezp]

Greetings!

I’m reaching out on behalf of the Google Cloud SDK for Java team seeking clarification on the End of Support (EOS) timeline for GraalVM Community Edition LTS versions (8, 11, 17, 21).

While the Enterprise Edition provides a clear support policy, we've found no equivalent information for the Community Edition. For example, the release calendar only shows planned Community Edition releases for JDK 24 onwards and doesn't mention support for older LTS versions.

Could you please help us clarify the EOS timeline for GraalVM Community Edition LTS versions?

Thanks in advance for your help,

[shaunsmith]

Hi Diego,

There has never been an LTS release of open source GraalVM Community Edition. Historically, the period in which releases were supported has varied but is now aligned with Oracle’s support for GPL-licensed builds of OpenJDK, which is for six months, i.e., until the subsequent Java version is released. Once a new Java version is released, the previous GraalVM Community Edition release is no longer supported by the GraalVM project team. This is reflected in the release calendar you linked to as you can see each GraalVM Community Edition release gets two CPUs before being superseded by the next major release.

The good news is that the GraalVM Free Terms and Conditions licensed Oracle GraalVM does provide LTS releases that receive free updates for three years. With LTS releases every two years, this gives anyone who wants to stay on the free-to-use version a year of overlap. So there’s plenty of time to migrate.

Hope this helps!